Failing charter schools offer empty promise of education

August 26, 2011|By Stephen L. Goldstein, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

If you buy a toaster but it consistently chars your bread, if you're like most people, you'd demand a new one -- or ask for your money back. If you pay for high-speed Internet service, you expect to get it -- or you cancel your plan. The code of the great American marketplace is: Promise and you'd better deliver.

But tragically, once again as the school year begins, tens of thousands of students nationwide will go to failing charter schools that promised to provide infinitely better education than they could have received in public school. Former zealous charter-school advocate Diane Ravitch has faced reality and provided a compelling case against them in a March 2010 article in The Wall Street Journal: "The only major national evaluation of charter schools was carried out by Stanford economist Margaret Raymond and funded by pro-charter foundations[my italics]. Her group found that compared to with regular public schools, 17 percent of charters got higher test scores, 46 percent had gains that were no different than their public counterparts, and 37 percent were significantly worse."

In her November 2010 critique of "Waiting for Superman," the much-touted David Guggenheim film touting about the virtues of charters, Ravitch rips (what she calls) his pro-charter propaganda: "Why did he not inquire into the charter chains that are mired in unsavory real estate deals, or take his camera to the charters where most students are getting lower scores than those in the neighborhood public schools? Why did he not report on the charter principals who have been indicted for embezzlement, or the charters that blur the line between church and state? Why did he not look into the charter schools whose leaders are paid $300,000 to $400,000 a year to oversee small numbers of schools and students?"

Taxpayers pay for charter schools. The money that would have gone to public systems is redistributed to the for-profit businesses or nonprofits that run them. But search Google under "failed charter schools" or "charter school scams" and you'll turn up a mountain of everything from incompetence to deceit. In state after state and city after city (New Mexico, Ohio, California, Indiana, Milwaukee, New Orleans, and on and on), charters don't make the grade.

In Florida, self-appointed education maven Jeb Bush made charter schools a cornerstone of his school reform. Even though the first charter school in Florida, which he helped start, failed, that hasn't stopped him from pushing for charters nationwide. Now, profit-minded Gov. Rick Scott wants to expand them big time, even though the experiment is failing. Half of Florida schools graded F this year were charters. Charter elementary and middle schools had a failure rate 740 percent higher on the FCAT than public schools. Scott's education advisor, Michelle Rhee, a disaster as head of the Washington, D.C. public schools, never saw a tax dollar she didn't want taken from a public school and handed over to a charter.

The Florida charter school takeover violates the state Constitution, which states: "Adequate provision shall be made by law for a uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools that allows students to obtain a high-quality education." "Adequate provision" for a "high quality" system is not being made when charters are siphoning taxpayer dollars from underfunded public schools. Parallel public and charter systems that follow different guidelines are not "uniform."

Some sincere education reformers touted charter schools because they welcomed freedom from perceived burdensome regulations that (they claimed) stymied innovation and student performance. But others, in the mold of Milton "I hate anything having to do with government" Friedman, glommed onto charters to redistribute a mega-pile of taxpayer money into private hands and destroy unions -- under the cover of helping kids.

We need a nationwide moratorium on the creation of new charter schools and a searching assessment of those operating. America's families deserve at least as much consumer protection for their kids' education as they expect for their toasters and Internet service.